November 26: Jeff Lindsey

A day after eating too much turkey, it was pretty warm but we decided to head to our favorite stand in the Georgia pine trees that we call “The Main Event”. There was a front rolling in and this stand is a funnel next to a big lake with some standing beans behind it. We had a few encounters with some shooter bucks there in the month of September and tonight the wind was perfect for it. One buck in particular was the first buck we had seen from this stand- a big 8 pt with a kicker off of his G2. We figured this buck was a 5 or 6 year old and I really wanted to catch up with this guy. I had been trying to kill him with my PSE and took it to the stand with us, but since it was rifle season, I had a back up plan, a .280 TC Pro Hunter. If he was just out of bow range he wouldn’t get away this time.

As soon as we climbed in the stand we noticed a couple of small bucks bedded down right in front of us. We watched them for about a hour and weren’t real excited they were still bedded there, we figured if these little guys weren’t moving, there wasn’t much hope the mature bucks were on their feet. About a hour before dark, the biggest of the 2 bucks got up and took off into the thicket below us. We figured he had caught wind of some does and headed to check them out. Sure enough he started grunting and pushed out 8 does. The rut is still going pretty good in the south and we knew these 8 does was like having live bait in front of us! They hung around for about a half hour and we noticed a buck come out of the bottom that was definitely mature but was real broke up so I decided to snort wheezed at him just to see if we could get him closer for a better look. With all of our attention on him, we had a couple deer sneak up to our right, I raised my Nikons and immediately recognized this buck as the big 8 with the split. I told Bobby to get the camera on him and I would try to get him close enough for a shot with light fading fast. I was frustrated he didn’t respond to my calling but then I realized, I have a gun! I was so use to bowhunting all fall I failed to realize he was in range for my back up plan. I pulled the hammer back and tattooed him with my TC! We were pumped and had our first southern buck in the back of the truck. - Jeff